Wilfred Beckerman is Emeritus Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford University, England. He received his Ph.D. from Oxford University and D.Phil. from Cambridge University, and he has been Honorary Visiting Professor of Economics at University College London, where he held the Chair in Political Economy. He has been a Member of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution; Chair of the United Kingdoms Department of the Environments Advisory Panel of Academic Economists; Research Director and a Member of the Council and the Executive Committee of the National Institute for Economic and Social Research; Economic Advisor to the President of the British Board of Trade; and Head of Division of the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development. He has also been a Visiting Professor at various universities in France and the U.S., and a consultant to the World Bank, United Nations, and International Labour Organization.

His books include Economics as Applied Ethics: Value Judgements in Welfare Economics; Economic Development and the Environment: Conflict or Complementarity; Poverty and the Impact of Income Maintenance Programs in Four Developed Countries; Growth, the Environment and the Distribution of Incomes: Essays by a Sceptical Optimist; Poverty and Social Security in Britain since 1961; Pricing for Pollution; Labour Government's Economic Record, 1964-70; Measures of Leisure, Equality and Welfare; Introduction to National Income Analysis; Justice, Posterity, and the Environment (with Joanna Pasek); Green-Colored Glasses: Environmentalism Reconsidered; In Defense of Economic Growth; Small Is Stupid: Blowing the Whistle on the Greens; and the Independent Institute book, A Poverty of Reason: Economic Growth and Sustainable Development.

He is a Member of the Editorial Board for the Electronic Journal of Sustainable Development, and his many scholarly articles have appeared in such journals as The Economic Journal, Economica, Econometrica, World Economics Journal, The Review of Economic Studies, Oxford Economic Papers, and The Review of Economics and Statistics.